


Beginning of a Friendship on a Summer Evening

by lyricwritesprose



Series: Guess the Author [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is good with kids, Fluff, Gen, POV Outsider, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26399986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Allen was lost.  Allen couldn't exactly ask for help.  And then he saw a telescope, set up in a garden, looking up at the stars he loved.  So, naturally, Allen went into the yard to take a look.
Series: Guess the Author [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806133
Comments: 46
Kudos: 208
Collections: Lyric's Emergency Fluff Collection, SOSH - Guess the Author #05 "A summer night in the South Downs"





	Beginning of a Friendship on a Summer Evening

Allen was panicking.

It wasn’t just that he was lost. It wasn’t that it was dark—Allen wasn’t afraid of the dark. It was that he had gone into a stranger’s garden to look at the telescope, and the stranger had snapped, “What do you think you’re doing?” And Allen couldn’t answer.

He had no way to tell the stranger to send him back to his aunt. No way to tell the stranger he didn’t mean any harm, he’d just wanted to see the telescope. Allen could manage decently if he had a keyboard, but he could no more talk out loud than he could fly. And  _ that _ meant the angry stranger would call the police, and then, and then—

Allen whimpered, and turned, and bolted.

Only to find the stranger  _ in front _ of him, and Allen wasn’t sure how that could possibly happen. “I’m not going to eat you, for pity’s sake,” the stranger said. “I just want to know what you were doing with my telescope.”

Allen flapped his hands with nervousness, and then clenched them together to make them stop. People didn’t always like the hand-flapping. People didn’t always like Allen the way he was, people thought he should be locked up, and now he was  _ going _ to be locked up, because the stranger—

“I don’t do this,” the stranger said. “It’s the other side’s thing. Which means that if you tell anyone that I  _ did _ do this, you’ll never get a haircut that you like again.” He leaned forward, close to Allen’s ear, and murmured,  _ “Be not afraid.” _

Allen wasn’t panicking. He tried to figure out how he got from panicking to not panicking, and came to no clear conclusion.

“You like telescopes?” the stranger said.

Allen rocked his head from side to side, which was the nearest to  _ sort of _ he could think of in body language.

“You like stars, and the telescopes are just a way to get there?”

Allen nodded enthusiastically. Actually,  _ liking _ stars didn’t come close enough. Allen had a  _ special interest _ in stars. The most important facts about Allen: he lived with his aunt, he had a special interest in stars.

"Real observation is a little different from your books. You know how to find the Summer Triangle? That's Altair, Deneb, and Vega."

Allen shook his head and did his best to project  _ show me?  _ as hard as he could. Deneb was one of his  _ favorites. _ Blue-white supergiant, apparent magnitude +1.25 . . .

"Okay. Look up there. We have time for a quick lesson before your aunt gets here.”

By the time Allen’s aunt arrived, panicking, Allen had actually  _ seen _ Deneb for the first time with his own eyes. He was bubbling over with happiness, convinced that Heaven was on Earth, in the garden of a cottage at the end of the lane.

“You can bring him back tomorrow night,” the man said, cutting off Allen’s aunt’s apologies. “He’s a decent listener. And we hadn’t even got to the Ring Nebula yet.”


End file.
